After ‘The Dark Knight Rises’: Where does the Batman franchise go from here?

The Dark Knight Rises marks the end of a cinematic era, but not
the end of films about Batman. Now that Christopher Nolan’s Batman
trilogy is complete, it’s natural to wonder what comes next for the
Caped Crusader.

After an appropriate hiatus, Warner Brothers will return
to the Batman franchise, but as Darren Franich’s cover gallery illustrates,
Nolan’s approach to the final film has made following him increasingly
difficult. Let’s put aside the iconic status of the Dark Knight trilogy
for a moment and consider how Nolan used the source material to compose
these three films.